


Adventures in Solitude

by LittleLostStar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Crying Victor Nikiforov, Fluff, Introvert Victor, M/M, Short One Shot, Team Russia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLostStar/pseuds/LittleLostStar
Summary: Brief vignette in which Victor is an introvert, but he hides it very well.





	Adventures in Solitude

**Author's Note:**

> Me: _*Socializes with friends for six hours, introvert batteries get drained*_ Okay I'll write maybe a few hundred words about Introvert!Victor for my own amusement and then go to bed early.  
>  Me: _*writes and hangs out on Discord for four and a half hours, emerges with this thing*_
> 
> At some point on the Victuuri Writers Collective server we discussed the possibility of Victor being an introvert so then this happened in my brain. Short but hopefully sweet; I do hope you'll let me know what you think.

**1:** **Observation**

Victor Nikiforov is fifteen years old and he’s just won a gold medal at the Russian Nationals. He watches as the senior men’s champions take questions at the press conference, wanting to support his rinkmate Alexei, the silver medalist. Alexei is visibly bored and annoyed by the reporters and their questions, and his answers get shorter and more terse by the minute. During the final question round, Alexei yawns wide before answering a reporter from _Sports Illustrated_.

As soon as he gets out of the view of the cameras, Alexei is beckoned over by a glowering Yakov.

“What was that?” he snaps, jerking his head in the direction of the press room. Victor watches Alexei shrug

“I’m tired, Yakov,” he mumbles. “Lay off.”

Yakov’s eyes narrow. “You are representing Team Russia,” he says. “You are representing our country and its people. I never want to see you yawn at a reporter again.”

“Yakov, it’s just a ya—”

“— _never. Again._ ” Yakov sounds furious, but Victor genuinely can’t figure out why. Nonetheless he absorbs the lesson: as a skater for Russia he will always, always present his best self to the public. It’s just an extension of his performances; it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

 

**2: Overload**

Victor Nikiforov is twenty years old and has just won a gold medal at Worlds. This year there are several changes to the usual routine; the press conference is scheduled for two hours after the podium ceremony, and then the banquet is almost immediately afterwards, making the final day of the competition incredibly long. Victor has been awake since six that morning; he skates last in his division, alternating his time between last-minute warmups and watching the others. His free skate is one of the most difficult pieces he’s ever attempted, with a truly ridiculous number of jumps, and it was worth it—but as he waves to the screaming crowd, something in Victor starts to crumple.

The hotel is too far away for him to get back to bathe and change in time, so he does it in the locker room at the arena, scrubbing away the sweat of competition in the public showers and taking the suit bag out of his locker where it’s been sitting for ten hours. The starched white shirt clings to his skin, and the men’s locker room doesn’t have a hair dryer, so Victor’s beautiful long silvery hair—his pride and joy—remains damp and limp throughout the entirety of the press conference. Every _click_ of a camera seems offensively loud, and every flash temporarily blinds him, but he never lets it show. His smile becomes a rictus grin, plastered onto his face like a cheap sticker, and his cheeks start to ache from the effort of it but he keeps the mask on because there is no other option. He answers every question with flair and charm, watching as each reporter falls in love with him one by one. His eyelids are heavy but he imagines hooks holding them open, like the interrogation scene in _A Clockwork Orange_. He is a perfect porcelain visage.

The banquet is _so_ loud, so full of people, that it seems like way too much. Someone drops a glass nearby and Victor can’t hide the way he flinches at the sound, but he laughs it off with his tablemates. His hair has dried into an unappealing mess; his suit jacket absorbed a lot of the water, and the dampness has still not quite evaporated from the back of his shirt, which sits heavy and uncomfortable on his shoulder blades. The free skate seems like it happened weeks ago instead of mere hours. Victor talks to three sponsors, dances with the _very_ cute bronze medalist from Israel, and gets the phone numbers and room numbers of no less than three of the senior division women. The clock ticks over to one in the morning when the DJ finally calls it a night, scattering tipsy athletes out to their hotel rooms like roots extending from a trunk. Victor crowds into an elevator and busts a gut laughing at some joke or other, waving merrily as he exits on his floor and wanders down the hall, key card in hand.

As soon as the hotel room door clicks shut behind him, he bursts into tears, clapping a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. He sags against the door, sliding down to sit on the plush carpet, and he exhales in shuddering sobs as the exhaustion hits him.

The next morning Georgi knocks on his door to invite him to a Team Russia brunch and Victor excuses himself by claiming he’s hungover, even though he’s not. He barely had anything to drink last night, but he ends up in bed all the same, barely able to move, head aching not from alcohol but from fatigue he just can’t seem to shake.

He spends the entire day alone, watching television and reading his favourite novel. He emails his doctor to make an appointment to find out what could have happened to make him feel so drained, terrified that it might be the first sign of something horrifically wrong with him, but the tests find nothing. Victor has no head injuries, no blood disorders, not even an iron deficiency. The Beck Depression inventory comes back negative; his Myers-Briggs type turns out to be INFP.

  
**3: Yawn**

Victor Nikiforov is twenty-seven years old and he’s bored. He’s just won his fifth consecutive gold medal at Worlds; he sits at the press conference, camera flashes twinkling around him like starlight, and despite twelve years of rigorous training he can’t help but yawn, just once.

  
**4:** **Batteries**

Victor Nikiforov is twenty-eight years old and has just made his comeback at the European Championships. It’s been a long day, between the free skate and the results being announced and even _more_ press conferences and then the banquet which is still going on downstairs, and now his hotel room key won’t work. He tries once, twice, three times, each time getting nothing but a squawk from the card reader and a blinking red light, and he can’t help the frustrated groan that escapes his lips.

“Victor?”

He turns at the sound of his name to see his fiance standing a few feet away, head cocked to the side ever so slightly, which is Victor’s own tic but Yuuri has since adopted it. Victor isn’t sure if he even realizes he does it.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and his lips twitch upwards but can’t quite make it to a smile. “Do you have your keycard on you? Mine is acting up.”

Yuuri comes closer and presses his own card into the reader; it chirps, the light turns green, and the tumblers clunk into place. Victor opens the door and nearly collapses at the sight of the inviting dark, and he walks straight for one of the beds without pausing to take off his shoes or turn on a light. He lies back, feet dangling a few inches off the ground, and spreads his arms wide as if he’s about to make a snow angel. His next breath is deep, cleansing, and as the air fills his lungs he thinks of waterfalls.

The bed dips with Yuuri’s weight. “Victor, are you alright?” The worry in his voice is brain-meltingly sweet, and now a real smile plays across Victor’s lips.

“Yes,” he whispers, eyes still closed. “I just need a break. Batteries need recharging.”

“Oh, uh, I have a portable power bank—”

Victor chuckles. “No, no, not my phone. My social batteries.”

Yuuri is silent, possibly stunned to the point of speechlessness, but then: “Y-your what?”

“Introverts!” Victor shrugs by way of an explanation. “We need time alone here and there.”

Yuuri cracks up. “You’re not an introvert, Victor.”

“ _Au contraire,_ my love,” he says. “I’m quite an introvert. But I’m also ridiculously charming and _very_ well trained in the art of public presentation. Even so, I’m at my best when I get to take a few minutes to myself once in a while. And it’s been a long day.”

He feels Yuuri lie down beside him. “I never knew that about you,” he says contemplatively.

“I’m not ashamed of it, if you’re wondering. It’s...it’s something I’ve worked on a lot, in the past few years. Knowing when to escape, knowing when it’s too much. Knowing when people get too tiring.”

Yuuri thinks for a moment. “Do you want to be alone, then?”

Victor pulls him over so they lie shoulder to shoulder, heads pressed together like stargazers. “ _You_ don’t count,” he grins. “You’re not people.”

It’s pitch dark in the room but Victor knows Yuuri is pouting. “Hey. Not nice.”

In response, Victor lovingly tousles Yuuri’s hair, planting a kiss on his scalp. “You know what I mean,” he murmurs. “You don’t exhaust me. I like having you around pretty much all the time.”

Yuuri absently walks his fingers across Victor’s chest. “Such a romantic, you are.”

Victor yawns extravagantly. “Don’t you know it.”


End file.
